This invention relates to hand-held telecommunications devices and, in particular, to an electronic hand-held device for inputting and sending requests and for receiving and outputting responses to the requests.
The acquisition of goods and services by placing orders with retailers and distributors is a vital component of modern commerce. Several different technologies for placing and receiving commercial orders currently account for the bulk of commercial order entry. Probably the most familiar and natural method of order entry is that of personal travel to a retail supplier for a face-to-face transaction paid for either in cash, by check, by credit card, or by an electronic transfer of funds. While such face-to-face transactions allow a purchaser to thoroughly inspect the goods and services that are being purchased, and while such transactions are relatively secure for both the purchaser and the retailer, especially when paid for in cash, face-to-face transactions are extremely inefficient in time and in communications costs. A purchaser generally travels to the retailer""s place of business by car or by public transportation at a relatively high cost in time and energy, often incurring significant risks in personal safety. While a cash transaction is relatively secure, the process of bringing the cash to the retailer""s place of business and of transporting purchased goods back to their place of use or storage often may not be secure. Paper money can be forged, checks can be misappropriated and fraudulently passed, credit cards can be misappropriated and fraudulently used, and electronic funds transfer may be vulnerable to errors and to electronic theft.
A second familiar method for placing an order and receiving goods and services is by use of the telephone. Many of the above-described risks for face-to-face transactions are avoided by using the telephone as a medium for commerce. A telephone transaction may be much more efficient in time and in communications costs than traveling to a retailer""s place of business. The risks inherent in traveling and carrying cash are avoided. However, telephone communications are notoriously insecure and, whereas telephone transactions may require less staffing and facilities overhead from the standpoint of a retailer, such transactions still require either human operators or relatively time-inefficient, cumbersome, and often annoying voice menu systems and recorded-voice order-entry systems.
Although popular use of the Internet is a relatively recent phenomenon, and use of the Internet as a medium of commerce is an even more recent phenomenon, the Internet has emerged to become one of the fastest growing and most technologically sophisticated mediums for order entry. An Internet user can quickly conduct a comparative analysis of products, identify retailers and distributors for those products, place orders through relatively easy mouse and keyboard input, and pay for the transactions using relatively secure encrypted communications for the exchange of credit card information and other types of electronic funds transfer. The Internet provides a much richer communications medium than the telephone by providing the display of graphical information as well as text-based and sound-based information. A disadvantage of the Internet is that a user is generally required to use a personal computer. Personal computers are expensive, costly to maintain over time, and inconvenient to carry.
The trends in order entry and commercial transactions are clear. Despite the disadvantages discussed above, electronic commerce will soon become the preferred medium for the exchange of goods and services. In many cases, the increase in time efficiencies and decreases in energy costs and in overheads for staffing and maintaining retail facilities more than offset the disadvantages in the lack of security and in the expense of the electronic order input devices, including personal computers, that are currently necessary for electronic commerce. However, in order to make electronic commerce and electronic order entry fully accessible to the general public, and even more advantageous with regard to time and expense, a new, relatively inexpensive, lightweight, and mobile hand-held telecommunications device for order input via a secure communications path would be desirable. An electronic order-entry device that offered the ease of use and the mobility of a wireless telephone would be especially desirable, and a telecommunications device that comprises a multi-media order-entry device and a telephone in one handheld package would be most desirable. In addition to use in placing orders for products and services, such a hand-held telecommunications device would find wide application in specifying, acquiring, and displaying information. Applications may include scanning barcodes contained in printed materials such as newspapers, magazines, and catalogs, or contained on products, such as airplane tickets and entertainment event tickets, and providing additional information about the products, including information about an airplane flight or entertainment event identified by the barcode. The additional information provided by such a hand-held telecommunications device could be effectively presented as spoken dialogue, displayed text, music, or displayed graphics. A one or two-dimensional barcode in a printed material may also contain an access code, such as an IP address, a URL, a web site address, a product/service ID code, a phone number, or other information that rapidly provides a user with secure electronic access to a host server.
One embodiment of the present invention provides a small, low-power, hand-held transaction device for inputting requests, transmitting the requests through a telecommunications link to a server computer, receiving responses to the transmitted requests from the server computer, and outputting the responses. The low-power, hand-held transaction device may receive mechanical input through a keypad, audio input through a microphone, and at least one other type of input, including printed barcodes and information stored either magnetically or electronically on credit cards and smart cards. This input is then encoded and sent to the server via a telecommunication link. The information contained in the responses that are returned from the server computer may be output in one or more information output types, including displayed alphanumeric symbols, displayed alphanumeric symbols and graphically images, voice, music, and printed text and graphical images. Orders from the order entry device to the server computer may be combinations of voice commands, bars codes, card information, or keystrokes. The order entry device may store inputs entered while off line. The stored inputs, such as UPC codes, may be sent to the server computer at a later time. The server computer may also provide communication with a live operator.
For convenience of use, the low-power, hand-held transaction device draws the necessary electrical power to operate from internal batteries, a telephone line loop current, or a computer port. Telecommunications server providers however, generally provide relatively small amounts of electrical power to wireless phones and accessories in order to extend battery life. In order to support the variety of input and output medium handled by the low-power, hand-held transaction device, careful power management strategies and a number of low-power internal components are incorporated into the low-power, hand-held transaction device.
Various embodiments of the low-power, hand-held transaction device may be connected to different types of telecommunications links. These types of telecommunications links include a standard telephone line, a serial port connection to a computer, a wireless telephone, and a PBX telephone line. The low-power, hand-held transaction device can be used both as a telephone as well as a request-transmitting and response-receiving device. The hand-held transaction device may provide peer-to-peer wireless telephone communication, thus providing a mobile wireless telephone as well as a transaction capability within a single device.
The low-power, hand-held transaction device includes support for secure transactions at the hardware level. The low-power, hand-held transaction device may include a protected memory that is very difficult to access by devices or monitors external to the low-power, hand-held transaction device. Confidential information, such as credit card numbers, addresses, account numbers, and encryption parameters, can be input into the low-power, hand-held transaction device and stored within the protected memory. When a credit card number must be included within a request that is transmitted to the telecommunications link, the credit card number may be encrypted within the low-power, hand-held transaction device prior to transmission. Thus, an unencrypted credit card number is not accessible to an external device or to a network monitor. The credit/debit card information may be keyed in by the user or may be electronically read in by the hand-held transaction device.
Connecting to an on-line server generally requires use of an access code. An access code may be stored in memory of the LHTD or may be entered by a user using a keypad, barcode reader, card reader, or any combination of these entry methods. A common access code is a phone number of an on-line server or Internet access provider. This phone number may be entered by a user via a keypad, activated from LHTD memory, or may be read in via a barcode reader or card reader.
There are an almost limitless number of different applications for the LHTD. For example, a user may see an interesting printed ad with a bar code. The user then may use the LHTD to read a bar code in the ad, after which the LHTD rapidly provides access to a host server that, in turn, provides an instant audio-visual response to the printed ad. In one application, a user employs the LHTD to listen to music clips before ordering tickets to a musical. In other applications, a user employs the LHTD to read a bar code to get sports scores or flight information. In still another example, a user uses the LHTD to scan bar codes on drugs to get the latest warnings and instructions in one of several optional languages.